gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

On Wed, 8 Sep 2010 01:25:14 +0000 (UTC), JohnF
wrote:

Bruce in Bangkok wrote:
If anyone else is also interested but having trouble with the
linux version, follow up here and then I'll report any progress I
eventually make to get it working.

What Linux do you have? I ask as I installed OpenCPN on at least two
systems - Fedora and Ubuntu with no problems I can remember.

Slackware 12.1 and 12.2 (I tried booting partitions with both).
Current is 13.1, but I haven't needed that (yet).
To begin with, I tried the OpenCPN-2.1.624a-1_i386.deb package,
first using alien http://packages.debian.org/unstable/source/alien
to convert .deb--.tar.gz, and then using tar on the resulting tarball.
That placed an executable image in /usr/local/bin/opencpn and lots
of other stuff in /usr/local/etc. But it wouldn't run without
the wxwidgets library, which I then had to build from sources
available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wxwindows/ .
But that's version 2.9 and OpenCPN wanted 2.8 or later.
So I made a mess of symlinks as opencpn complained about each
missing lib, but after finishing that it finally started complaining
opencpn: /lib/libwx_baseu_net-2.8.so.0: version `WXU_2.8' not
found (required by opencpn)
for each symlinked lib.
I gave up on the .deb package and tried building from
OpenCPN-2.1.624a-Source.tar.gz sources. First I needed to build
a version of cmake (cmake-2.8.2.tar.gz) it liked, but then
the generated Makefile apparently added some unrecognized compiler
flags which I cavalierly manually edited out (don't recall exactly
what and I subsequently rm'ed the build directory which I'd have
to reconstruct to quote the errors exactly). Then the compiler
reported some source errors, which may or may not be related
to what I'd done. At this point I ran out of time to look into the
.cpp sources (I do know C and C++ pretty well).
So I gave up for the time being, and will probably just install
the windows OpenCPN-210_setup.exe file, which I suppose will work
without a hitch. But thanks for the Fedora and Ubuntu report,
which gives me confidence it's doable once I can figure out how.


Funny, I downloaded and installed the app on Fedora with no problems
at all. Don't remember whether there was a RPM file or not but don't
remember any particular problems. I also installed it on my Eee (not
sure at the moment what version Linux is on that, Fedora I think) and
again don't remember any problems. But after reading your message I
tried to install it on the present laptop (Ubuntu 9.10) and had
similar problems, although not as extensive as you.

I down loaded version 2.1.624a-Source and un-tared it. The tarball
contained everything (cmake and libraries) and it compiles..... with
only one error. It is complaining about GTK2Config.cmake and
gtk2-config.cmake that aren't there.

In addition, after having installed on the two computers I have just
now read the README and discover that the app creates its own serial
device but with System permissions while the app runs at user
level....

The system seems quite useful and I thought it was going to allow me
to totally ignore Windows, at least on the boat computers however
perhaps, for now, I'll just stay with what I got, that runs.

One of the few things that I do appreciate about Windows is that you
can download an application and it will run.... right out of the box.
Linux, the much touted "free" system, frequently will not compile a
new app and, at least in my experience, sometimes requires very hard
to locate libraries.

Ah well, progress :-)

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

On Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:12:22 +0700, Bruce in Bangkok
wrote:

One of the few things that I do appreciate about Windows is that you
can download an application and it will run.... right out of the box.
Linux, the much touted "free" system, frequently will not compile a
new app and, at least in my experience, sometimes requires very hard
to locate libraries.

What is it about Linux that requires you to compile things before you
can run them? Is it because they are distributed as source code?

gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

Bruce in Bangkok wrote:
JohnF wrote:
Bruce in Bangkok wrote:
JohnF wrote:
If anyone else is also interested but having trouble with the
linux version, follow up here and then I'll report any progress I
eventually make to get it working.

What Linux do you have? I ask as I installed OpenCPN on at least two
systems - Fedora and Ubuntu with no problems I can remember.

Slackware 12.1 and 12.2 (I tried booting partitions with both).
Current is 13.1, but I haven't needed that (yet).
To begin with, I tried the OpenCPN-2.1.624a-1_i386.deb package,
first using alien http://packages.debian.org/unstable/source/alien
to convert .deb--.tar.gz, and then using tar on the resulting tarball.
That placed an executable image in /usr/local/bin/opencpn and lots
of other stuff in /usr/local/etc. But it wouldn't run without
the wxwidgets library, which I then had to build from sources
available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wxwindows/ .
But that's version 2.9 and OpenCPN wanted 2.8 or later.
So I made a mess of symlinks as opencpn complained about each
missing lib, but after finishing that it finally started complaining
opencpn: /lib/libwx_baseu_net-2.8.so.0: version `WXU_2.8' not
found (required by opencpn)
for each symlinked lib.
I gave up on the .deb package and tried building from
OpenCPN-2.1.624a-Source.tar.gz sources. First I needed to build
a version of cmake (cmake-2.8.2.tar.gz) it liked, but then
the generated Makefile apparently added some unrecognized compiler
flags which I cavalierly manually edited out (don't recall exactly
what and I subsequently rm'ed the build directory which I'd have
to reconstruct to quote the errors exactly). Then the compiler
reported some source errors, which may or may not be related
to what I'd done. At this point I ran out of time to look into the
.cpp sources (I do know C and C++ pretty well).
So I gave up for the time being, and will probably just install
the windows OpenCPN-210_setup.exe file, which I suppose will work
without a hitch. But thanks for the Fedora and Ubuntu report,
which gives me confidence it's doable once I can figure out how.

Funny, I downloaded and installed the app on Fedora with no problems
at all. Don't remember whether there was a RPM file or not but don't
remember any particular problems. I also installed it on my Eee (not
sure at the moment what version Linux is on that, Fedora I think) and
again don't remember any problems. But after reading your message I
tried to install it on the present laptop (Ubuntu 9.10) and had
similar problems, although not as extensive as you.

"misery loves company" :)

I down loaded version 2.1.624a-Source and un-tared it. The tarball
contained everything (cmake and libraries) and it compiles..... with
only one error. It is complaining about GTK2Config.cmake and
gtk2-config.cmake that aren't there.

Nope, my source tarball doesn't contain cmake and libraries.
It's
OpenCPN-2.1.624a-Source.tar.gz
size: 16718233 bytes
md5 checksum: d0e6bbaef3261ed6974e48b785cecba7
That what you got??? Actually, I'm guessing your linux
distributions use apt-get which would automatically and
transparently download all dependencies, as per the
http://opencpn.org/compiling_source_linux
page. Slackware doesn't do that (sometimes fortunately
but this time not so much).

In addition, after having installed on the two computers I have just
now read the README and discover that the app creates its own serial
device but with System permissions while the app runs at user
level....

The system seems quite useful and I thought it was going to allow me
to totally ignore Windows, at least on the boat computers however
perhaps, for now, I'll just stay with what I got, that runs.

Yeah, I'll continue to use some spare time trying to get
the linux version running comfortably. I'm sure it's ultimately
doable based on your remarks (permissions problems usually
aren't too hard to solve). But, like you say, it's a more
important boat thing than a computer thing, so if windows is
quicker/easier/whatever, I'm happy to go that route, too.

One of the few things that I do appreciate about Windows is that you
can download an application and it will run.... right out of the box.

Ditto, as per above remarks.

Linux, the much touted "free" system, frequently will not compile a
new app and, at least in my experience, sometimes requires very hard
to locate libraries.

To me, a professional software developer, it's usually
a task I'm accustomed and comfortable (and succesful) doing,
and that's usually well worth the effort. But that's a
whole other long story. My bottom line computer advice
to people who want to spend more time cruising than messing
with computers is: if you're happy with windows, by all means
just use it.

Ah well, progress :-)

Be patient. The underlying problem is windows' humongous market
share, which disincentivizes developers from putting much effort
into other os ports. And like 90% of any such extra effort goes
to the mac market. Actually, given those facts, linux has been
wildly surprisingly successful. I imagine things will only improve
over time.

Bruce (bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)
I'll email you there if/when I get it working right on linux.
This line of discussion might be getting off-topic for this ng :)
Thanks again (Bruce, Wayne, and everybody) for your help,
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: where j=john and f=forkosh )

gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

Wayne.B wrote:
Bruce in Bangkok wrote:

One of the few things that I do appreciate about Windows is that you
can download an application and it will run.... right out of the box.
Linux, the much touted "free" system, frequently will not compile a
new app and, at least in my experience, sometimes requires very hard
to locate libraries.

What is it about Linux that requires you to compile things before you
can run them?

That's becoming less and less of a necessity, with some applications
as easy to install on linux as on windows. When you do more or less
need to compile, it's typically because there are quite a few
different linux distributions that can have different versions
of different libraries installed in different directories.
And the application needs to know what's available and where.
There are emerging (though unenforced) standards that people
are slowly converging towards, so this kind of problem should
slowly disappear.

Is it because they are distributed as source code?

For applications distributed as source only, then sure.
But many/most also come with binaries that'll run (if all
goes well) out of the box. Then the source isn't needed
at all, but encourages a wider community of developers
to contribute ideas, code, etc (e.g., debugging).
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: where j=john and f=forkosh )

gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

On Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:20:36 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:12:22 +0700, Bruce in Bangkok
wrote:

One of the few things that I do appreciate about Windows is that you
can download an application and it will run.... right out of the box.
Linux, the much touted "free" system, frequently will not compile a
new app and, at least in my experience, sometimes requires very hard
to locate libraries.

What is it about Linux that requires you to compile things before you
can run them? Is it because they are distributed as source code?


Generally yes. Basically Linux software distributed in two ways. As a
"DEB" or "RPM" file which is basically the actual application and
any/all libraries that it requires. It is then installed with a DEB or
RPM utility that checks for all dependences and loads the required
libraries onto the computer. The other method is as raw source code
which contains the actual application and none of the libraries it may
require. then you compile it and if it need additional libraries then
you have to scout all over the Internet to find them.

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

On Thu, 9 Sep 2010 15:50:01 +0000 (UTC), JohnF
wrote:

Bruce in Bangkok wrote:
JohnF wrote:
Bruce in Bangkok wrote:
JohnF wrote:
If anyone else is also interested but having trouble with the
linux version, follow up here and then I'll report any progress I
eventually make to get it working.

What Linux do you have? I ask as I installed OpenCPN on at least two
systems - Fedora and Ubuntu with no problems I can remember.

Slackware 12.1 and 12.2 (I tried booting partitions with both).
Current is 13.1, but I haven't needed that (yet).
To begin with, I tried the OpenCPN-2.1.624a-1_i386.deb package,
first using alien http://packages.debian.org/unstable/source/alien
to convert .deb--.tar.gz, and then using tar on the resulting tarball.
That placed an executable image in /usr/local/bin/opencpn and lots
of other stuff in /usr/local/etc. But it wouldn't run without
the wxwidgets library, which I then had to build from sources
available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wxwindows/ .
But that's version 2.9 and OpenCPN wanted 2.8 or later.
So I made a mess of symlinks as opencpn complained about each
missing lib, but after finishing that it finally started complaining
opencpn: /lib/libwx_baseu_net-2.8.so.0: version `WXU_2.8' not
found (required by opencpn)
for each symlinked lib.
I gave up on the .deb package and tried building from
OpenCPN-2.1.624a-Source.tar.gz sources. First I needed to build
a version of cmake (cmake-2.8.2.tar.gz) it liked, but then
the generated Makefile apparently added some unrecognized compiler
flags which I cavalierly manually edited out (don't recall exactly
what and I subsequently rm'ed the build directory which I'd have
to reconstruct to quote the errors exactly). Then the compiler
reported some source errors, which may or may not be related
to what I'd done. At this point I ran out of time to look into the
.cpp sources (I do know C and C++ pretty well).
So I gave up for the time being, and will probably just install
the windows OpenCPN-210_setup.exe file, which I suppose will work
without a hitch. But thanks for the Fedora and Ubuntu report,
which gives me confidence it's doable once I can figure out how.

Funny, I downloaded and installed the app on Fedora with no problems
at all. Don't remember whether there was a RPM file or not but don't
remember any particular problems. I also installed it on my Eee (not
sure at the moment what version Linux is on that, Fedora I think) and
again don't remember any problems. But after reading your message I
tried to install it on the present laptop (Ubuntu 9.10) and had
similar problems, although not as extensive as you.

"misery loves company" :)

I down loaded version 2.1.624a-Source and un-tared it. The tarball
contained everything (cmake and libraries) and it compiles..... with
only one error. It is complaining about GTK2Config.cmake and
gtk2-config.cmake that aren't there.

Nope, my source tarball doesn't contain cmake and libraries.
It's
OpenCPN-2.1.624a-Source.tar.gz
size: 16718233 bytes
md5 checksum: d0e6bbaef3261ed6974e48b785cecba7
That what you got??? Actually, I'm guessing your linux
distributions use apt-get which would automatically and
transparently download all dependencies, as per the
http://opencpn.org/compiling_source_linux
page. Slackware doesn't do that (sometimes fortunately
but this time not so much).


I'll have to search around as what I have on this particular computer
is the expanded tarball, which does contain everything Ubuntu needed
except for the two cmake libraries I mentioned. I'll post details of
what I downloaded as soon as I can find it, but I got it from the
OpenCPN website so it can't be too esoteric


In addition, after having installed on the two computers I have just
now read the README and discover that the app creates its own serial
device but with System permissions while the app runs at user
level....

The system seems quite useful and I thought it was going to allow me
to totally ignore Windows, at least on the boat computers however
perhaps, for now, I'll just stay with what I got, that runs.

Yeah, I'll continue to use some spare time trying to get
the linux version running comfortably. I'm sure it's ultimately
doable based on your remarks (permissions problems usually
aren't too hard to solve). But, like you say, it's a more
important boat thing than a computer thing, so if windows is
quicker/easier/whatever, I'm happy to go that route, too.


I run CMAP with Wine. In fact I use Wine for both CMAP and Agent (that
I'm using right now). It certainly isn't perfect but it does work
fairly well, in most cases I've tried.

One of the few things that I do appreciate about Windows is that you
can download an application and it will run.... right out of the box.

Ditto, as per above remarks.

Linux, the much touted "free" system, frequently will not compile a
new app and, at least in my experience, sometimes requires very hard
to locate libraries.

To me, a professional software developer, it's usually
a task I'm accustomed and comfortable (and succesful) doing,
and that's usually well worth the effort. But that's a
whole other long story. My bottom line computer advice
to people who want to spend more time cruising than messing
with computers is: if you're happy with windows, by all means
just use it.

Ah well, progress :-)

Be patient. The underlying problem is windows' humongous market
share, which disincentivizes developers from putting much effort
into other os ports. And like 90% of any such extra effort goes
to the mac market. Actually, given those facts, linux has been
wildly surprisingly successful. I imagine things will only improve
over time.

I don't see it progressing to any extent. At the moment it is pretty
much the flavor of choice if one talks servers but for Joe Everyman
and his laptop I don't believe it will ever catch up with Windows.
I've got a mate down in Singapore that fits the picture perfectly. He
is semi retired and does business consulting. He needs to send and
receive e-mail; type correspondence and maybe do a spreadsheet once in
a while. Totally computer illiterate.

He calls the computer company - name brand only - and orders a
computer; they deliver, set it up and it works. Two - three years
later he does it again. You want to talk about Operating Systems? He
doesn't even know what that is and furthermore doesn't care.

I suspect that the thing is that the computer has reached the stage of
the IBM Selectric. It works and while its idiosyncrasies may be of
great interest to those who repair or maintain typewriters it is of
little interest to those who actual use the machines.

Bruce (bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)
I'll email you there if/when I get it working right on linux.
This line of discussion might be getting off-topic for this ng :)
Thanks again (Bruce, Wayne, and everybody) for your help,
Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

Bruce in Bangkok wrote:
JohnF wrote:
Bruce in Bangkok wrote:

I down loaded version 2.1.624a-Source and un-tared it. The tarball
contained everything (cmake and libraries) and it compiles..... with
only one error. It is complaining about GTK2Config.cmake and
gtk2-config.cmake that aren't there.

Nope, my source tarball doesn't contain cmake and libraries.
It's
OpenCPN-2.1.624a-Source.tar.gz
size: 16718233 bytes
md5 checksum: d0e6bbaef3261ed6974e48b785cecba7
That what you got??? Actually, I'm guessing your linux
distributions use apt-get which would automatically and
transparently download all dependencies, as per the
http://opencpn.org/compiling_source_linux
page. Slackware doesn't do that (sometimes fortunately
but this time not so much).

I'll have to search around as what I have on this particular computer
is the expanded tarball, which does contain everything Ubuntu needed
except for the two cmake libraries I mentioned. I'll post details of
what I downloaded as soon as I can find it, but I got it from the
OpenCPN website so it can't be too esoteric

Don't spend too much time; it's not really too important.
And I'm guessing you used some installer like apt-get which
might have -- unbeknownst to you -- downloaded more stuff
than you explicitly downloaded from opencpn.org .
For example, maybe you downloaded and installed the .deb version
first. Then that probably got all the wxWidgets stuff. Later on
maybe you tried compiling the source .tar.gz version. Of course,
tar wouldn't have downloaded any extra stuff/dependencies, but
the previous .deb install would already have done most of that.
You'd have gotten all the wxWidgets stuff and maybe or maybe not
some/all of the cmake stuff. So you might have been fooled into
thinking that the tarball contained the stuff previously
downloaded for you by apt-get run against the .deb file.
Or any number of other scenarios could have resulted in
a situation on your disk that would be very difficult to try
to reconstruct/unravel. In any event, I can see from a tar -tzvf
on the source tarball that it doesn't explicitly contain the cmake
and wxWidgets stuff.

In addition, after having installed on the two computers I have just
now read the README and discover that the app creates its own serial
device but with System permissions while the app runs at user
level....

The system seems quite useful and I thought it was going to allow me
to totally ignore Windows, at least on the boat computers however
perhaps, for now, I'll just stay with what I got, that runs.

Yeah, I'll continue to use some spare time trying to get
the linux version running comfortably. I'm sure it's ultimately
doable based on your remarks (permissions problems usually
aren't too hard to solve). But, like you say, it's a more
important boat thing than a computer thing, so if windows is
quicker/easier/whatever, I'm happy to go that route, too.

I run CMAP with Wine. In fact I use Wine for both CMAP and Agent (that
I'm using right now). It certainly isn't perfect but it does work
fairly well, in most cases I've tried.

Wow, wine. Long time since I heard anybody using that.
But if it works for your apps, then fine. To the extent
that it doesn't, most people nowadays are using virtualizers
like vmware or xen to run windows under linux (or vice versa).
The atom-based samsung nc10 netbook that I'd bring along on
charters doesn't have the horsepower or memory for that,
so I just dual boot it. (For most recent windows apps,
wine has pretty much turned to vinegar.)

Linux, the much touted "free" system, frequently will not compile a
new app and, at least in my experience, sometimes requires very hard
to locate libraries.

Be patient. The underlying problem is windows' humongous market
share, which disincentivizes developers from putting much effort
into other os ports. And like 90% of any such extra effort goes
to the mac market. Actually, given those facts, linux has been
wildly surprisingly successful. I imagine things will only improve
over time.

I don't see it progressing to any extent. At the moment it is pretty
much the flavor of choice if one talks servers but for Joe Everyman
and his laptop I don't believe it will ever catch up with Windows.

Yeah, maybe, but a tough call either way. "It's hard to make
predictions, especially about the future." -- Yogi Berra.
(The "./configure;make;make install" procedure has become
a lot more standardized and robust, and I'm guessing that
trend will continue.)

I've got a mate down in Singapore that fits the picture perfectly. He
is semi retired and does business consulting. He needs to send and
receive e-mail; type correspondence and maybe do a spreadsheet once in
a while. Totally computer illiterate.

Sure, absolutely. If he, or anybody, is happy with the way their
computer is running under windows, then by all means continue using it.
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: where j=john and f=forkosh )

gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

In article , JohnF wrote:
Bruce in Bangkok wrote:

Don't spend too much time; it's not really too important.
And I'm guessing you used some installer like apt-get which
might have -- unbeknownst to you -- downloaded more stuff
than you explicitly downloaded from opencpn.org .

apt doesn't download stuff without letting the user know. It always
tells of dependancies and asks if the user would like to get those too.
In addition, the couldn't install the package with apt unless the
OpenCPN web-site was added to /etc/apt/sources.list, and the site was
configured as a Debian type repository (which is unlikely). What is more
likely is that the .deb was downloaded and installed with something like
dpkg. dpkg will complain of missing dependencies but the user will have
to track those down themselves.


For example, maybe you downloaded and installed the .deb version
first. Then that probably got all the wxWidgets stuff.
Later on
maybe you tried compiling the source .tar.gz version. Of course,
tar wouldn't have downloaded any extra stuff/dependencies, but
the previous .deb install would already have done most of that.

There is the possibility of there being a problem with this, but it's
dependent on the `make' file. Certain parts of the build may not be
installed if the files are already in place (from a previous install
attempt), but it's equally possible (and I would expect more likely for
anything outside /etc) that the install would over-write.


You'd have gotten all the wxWidgets stuff and maybe or maybe not
some/all of the cmake stuff. So you might have been fooled into
thinking that the tarball contained the stuff previously
downloaded for you by apt-get run against the .deb file.
Or any number of other scenarios could have resulted in
a situation on your disk that would be very difficult to try
to reconstruct/unravel. In any event, I can see from a tar -tzvf
on the source tarball that it doesn't explicitly contain the cmake
and wxWidgets stuff.

Taking a quick look at one of the Debian systems here, I can tell you
that wx is available in current Debian stable, however, according to
mine (which might be old stable, I don't recall just now) it's only 2.6,
I think I read on this thread that 2.8 is required.

I had an email from one the the Debian mailing lists mentioning that
official back-ports can now be added to /etc/apt/sources.list so that
you can upgrade packages as required for apps that require a more recent
version than you have.

I don't see it progressing to any extent. At the moment it is pretty
much the flavor of choice if one talks servers but for Joe Everyman
and his laptop I don't believe it will ever catch up with Windows.

Yeah, maybe, but a tough call either way. "It's hard to make
predictions, especially about the future." -- Yogi Berra.
(The "./configure;make;make install" procedure has become
a lot more standardized and robust, and I'm guessing that
trend will continue.)

Computers are becoming commodity items, the trend is toward devices for
a purpose. A news story on UK radio today said that within about three
years more people will be accessing the web through phones than
traditional computers. The OS is becoming less important. I believe
Google has a 'device' in the pipeline, not only is MS in Google's
sights, so is Apple - and can you guess what will be the underlying code
to Google's code? It certainly won't be Windows!

Justin.

--
Justin C, by the sea.

gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

On Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:46:28 +0000 (UTC), JohnF
wrote:

Bruce in Bangkok wrote:
JohnF wrote:
Bruce in Bangkok wrote:

I down loaded version 2.1.624a-Source and un-tared it. The tarball
contained everything (cmake and libraries) and it compiles..... with
only one error. It is complaining about GTK2Config.cmake and
gtk2-config.cmake that aren't there.

Nope, my source tarball doesn't contain cmake and libraries.
It's
OpenCPN-2.1.624a-Source.tar.gz
size: 16718233 bytes
md5 checksum: d0e6bbaef3261ed6974e48b785cecba7
That what you got??? Actually, I'm guessing your linux
distributions use apt-get which would automatically and
transparently download all dependencies, as per the
http://opencpn.org/compiling_source_linux
page. Slackware doesn't do that (sometimes fortunately
but this time not so much).

I'll have to search around as what I have on this particular computer
is the expanded tarball, which does contain everything Ubuntu needed
except for the two cmake libraries I mentioned. I'll post details of
what I downloaded as soon as I can find it, but I got it from the
OpenCPN website so it can't be too esoteric

Don't spend too much time; it's not really too important.
And I'm guessing you used some installer like apt-get which
might have -- unbeknownst to you -- downloaded more stuff
than you explicitly downloaded from opencpn.org .
For example, maybe you downloaded and installed the .deb version
first. Then that probably got all the wxWidgets stuff. Later on
maybe you tried compiling the source .tar.gz version. Of course,
tar wouldn't have downloaded any extra stuff/dependencies, but
the previous .deb install would already have done most of that.
You'd have gotten all the wxWidgets stuff and maybe or maybe not
some/all of the cmake stuff. So you might have been fooled into
thinking that the tarball contained the stuff previously
downloaded for you by apt-get run against the .deb file.
Or any number of other scenarios could have resulted in
a situation on your disk that would be very difficult to try
to reconstruct/unravel. In any event, I can see from a tar -tzvf
on the source tarball that it doesn't explicitly contain the cmake
and wxWidgets stuff.

In addition, after having installed on the two computers I have just
now read the README and discover that the app creates its own serial
device but with System permissions while the app runs at user
level....

The system seems quite useful and I thought it was going to allow me
to totally ignore Windows, at least on the boat computers however
perhaps, for now, I'll just stay with what I got, that runs.

Yeah, I'll continue to use some spare time trying to get
the linux version running comfortably. I'm sure it's ultimately
doable based on your remarks (permissions problems usually
aren't too hard to solve). But, like you say, it's a more
important boat thing than a computer thing, so if windows is
quicker/easier/whatever, I'm happy to go that route, too.

I run CMAP with Wine. In fact I use Wine for both CMAP and Agent (that
I'm using right now). It certainly isn't perfect but it does work
fairly well, in most cases I've tried.

Wow, wine. Long time since I heard anybody using that.
But if it works for your apps, then fine. To the extent
that it doesn't, most people nowadays are using virtualizers
like vmware or xen to run windows under linux (or vice versa).
The atom-based samsung nc10 netbook that I'd bring along on
charters doesn't have the horsepower or memory for that,
so I just dual boot it. (For most recent windows apps,
wine has pretty much turned to vinegar.)

Linux, the much touted "free" system, frequently will not compile a
new app and, at least in my experience, sometimes requires very hard
to locate libraries.

Be patient. The underlying problem is windows' humongous market
share, which disincentivizes developers from putting much effort
into other os ports. And like 90% of any such extra effort goes
to the mac market. Actually, given those facts, linux has been
wildly surprisingly successful. I imagine things will only improve
over time.

I don't see it progressing to any extent. At the moment it is pretty
much the flavor of choice if one talks servers but for Joe Everyman
and his laptop I don't believe it will ever catch up with Windows.

Yeah, maybe, but a tough call either way. "It's hard to make
predictions, especially about the future." -- Yogi Berra.
(The "./configure;make;make install" procedure has become
a lot more standardized and robust, and I'm guessing that
trend will continue.)

I've got a mate down in Singapore that fits the picture perfectly. He
is semi retired and does business consulting. He needs to send and
receive e-mail; type correspondence and maybe do a spreadsheet once in
a while. Totally computer illiterate.

Sure, absolutely. If he, or anybody, is happy with the way their
computer is running under windows, then by all means continue using it.


As a quick note before my wifi dies. I just downloaded the OpenCPN
"deb" file from the home URL and installed it on Ubuntu 9.10 with no
problems whatsoever. Have also downloaded the source (from same URL)
and having troubles making the cmake scripts. More as it happens.

Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)

gps receiver and software for netbook chartplotter
 

Justin C wrote:
JohnF wrote:
Bruce in Bangkok wrote:

Don't spend too much time; it's not really too important.
And I'm guessing you used some installer like apt-get which
might have -- unbeknownst to you -- downloaded more stuff
than you explicitly downloaded from opencpn.org .

apt doesn't download stuff without letting the user know. It always
tells of dependancies and asks if the user would like to get those too.
In addition, the couldn't install the package with apt unless the
OpenCPN web-site was added to /etc/apt/sources.list, and the site was
configured as a Debian type repository (which is unlikely). What is more
likely is that the .deb was downloaded and installed with something like
dpkg. dpkg will complain of missing dependencies but the user will have
to track those down themselves.

Thanks for the apr corrections, Justin, and for the additional (snipped)
debian info. I've been using slackware, and (obviously) don't know much
about debian's installer. Based on Bruce's discussion, I'd just assumed
apt probably did something along the lines I described; apparently not.

Taking a quick look at one of the Debian systems here, I can tell you
that wx is available in current Debian stable, however, according to
mine (which might be old stable, I don't recall just now) it's only 2.6,
I think I read on this thread that 2.8 is required.

Yeah, based on messages from my failed install, 2.8 is required.
So now I'd try assuming Bruce's release had 2.8 installed by
default (slackware 12.2 has no wxWidgets installed).
And I now see from http://www.wxwidgets.org/downloads/ that
the 2.9 I downloaded is a "development" release; had I noticed that
originally I'd have downloaded the "current stable" 2.8 to begin with.
And that probably would have worked with the executable images in
the .deb file.
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: where j=john and f=forkosh )